Snowflake Biscornu

Biscornu's have been popular for a few years now. I've always admired them but haven't tried making one until recently. Last weekend, my Embroiderers' Guild of America chapter had a program on biscornu finishing. Several beautiful designs where provided but I wanted to do my own thing.

A biscornu, a many sided object, is made with one or two stitched squares so any square design will work. Since the design comes together at the corners and the center is indented I sensed interesting possibilities. I wanted my design to take advantage of these features.

In December I made tons of paper snowflakes and decided a paper snowflake would be a great inspiration. So, I designed a cross-stitch snowflake just as I would cut one out of paper. I only worked with one quadrant adding cutouts and other shapes and then "unfolded" it to get the finished snowflake.

For fun I stitched it in two colorways, light green on purple and dark teal on gray. After that experience I do not recommend purple linen, no matter how good it looks, it is very difficult to stitch on. Even with a sheet of white paper behind it was very difficult to see the threads to stitch over two.

I couldn't decide on purple or gray for the connecting stitch so compromised with pink. It seemed like a good idea, but all the mistakes I made learning the stitch are visible. I don't care. I like the result. But next time I'll probably won't contrast as much.

The next element of the biscournu is the buttons that hold the center dimple in place. I always enjoy dumping out the button jar and seeing what's inside.

There where many possibilities but I liked the pearl-like buttons the best so that's what I used.

So here is the finished biscornu with the paper snowflake.

Ok, my first biscornu is complete and I'm officially addicted. I have so many ideas for more snowflake patterns and other biscornu patterns that I'll be working on.

This pattern is available at http://www.patternsonline.com/

Comments

It's about time - the big reveal

My bright quilt was finished in June but I wanted to wait until both were done before sharing the pictures. Quilting the blue quilt didn't take long but finishing the binding sure did. I did procrastinate a bit as it was too warm to have a huge quilt on my lap for most of the summer. After this, I'll probably do all the binding on my sewing machine (and stick to smaller quilts). Notice the cut-out corners? That was a challenge. I found instructions here and it looked easy enough but I wished I had practiced some. After a lot of finessing I finally got good miters but I could have done much better. The cut-out corners allow the quilt to hang nicely over the edges of the mattress and it's a perfect match for a full sized mattress. But, the top edge isn't even close to the pillows. I wonder how the quilt fit on the bed it was made for. Here, at last, is the original quilt that I was copying. I just noticed - all of the baskets are

More Wildflowers of America

Since I have framed the stitched Bleeding Heart from Curtis Boehringer's Wildflowers of America I decided to track down the other 3 wildflowers that had I stiched earlier. I chose these flowers because they reminded me of the forests of Ohio where I grew up - Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Wake Robin and Bloodroot. The Jack-in-the-Pulpit and Wake Robin where both finished with fabric frames. This was a favorite finishing technique of mine for a long time. On the back they are dated 1999 - that was a while ago. I remember the quilt store where I purchased the fabric, but not its name. It's gone now but it was in an old Victorian house in Old Colorado City. The turrets where lined with bolts of fabric and hey had a great selection of plaids. I had never heard name Wake Robin before and it means nothing to me, but the flower is definitely a Trillium. Back then, I dutifully followed the pattern. Now I would have used the name Trillium or omitted the letters altogether. I do miss

Diverted by Dorset Buttons

I learned how to make Dorset Buttons yesterday at our monthly EGA meeting . These little buttons are so much fun to make! We only got three rings so that's how many I made. If I would have gotten more I'd probably be still making them. One nice thing is that they are very forgiving. I made countless mistakes on my first one and you can't tell. A quick google revealed lots of websites with historical information and tutorials on how to make them so I'm not even going to try to describe the process. Some people made their buttons with yarn, others used perle cotton. One of the examples had beads on it, so once I got home I had to find some beads to sew on. That's it for now. I'm going to be keeping my eye's open rings to use. I'm also going to have to go through my yarn stash. Using yarn gives a totally different result and I want to try some yarn ones too.

Erica's Stitches

Search This Blog